Supporters of the failed effort to repeal Maine's school consolidation law are hoping to find some new middle ground in the debate that has been divided largely along rural and urban lines. Although the vast majority of Maine's students are in districts that already comply with consolidation goals, voters in more than 100 school districts have rejected the plan. Both sides are willing to search for solutions, but the process will not be easy.

Although opponents of Maine's school consolidation law failed to make their case to the voters earlier this month, members of the Legislature's Education Committee hope they can make some changes in the law to accommodate the critics. But they'll have a hard time getting beyond one of the greatest concerns facing many small school districts.

Roger Shaw, the superintendent of schools in the Aroostook County town of Mars Hill, testified before the committee in Augusta. "We are fearful of losing our school, not for the sake of losing the school, for the sake of having kids in our current SAU having to travel 40 to 50 miles to a school to get an education. That is not acceptable," Shaw said.

Supporters of two-year-old school consolidation law had hoped to achieve savings for the state by reorganizing the state's 260 school districts into 80 districts. As of July, there were still well over 200 districts remaining, despite the efforts of stakeholders to reach agreements over such complex issues as debt service, teacher contracts and infrastructure.

"We were left wondering at the end of the day what the goal was," said Quenten Clark, a school superintendent for a school district north of Farmington in Franklin County. "Was the goal to get rid of superintendents? Was the goal to save money? At the end of the day with 50 people sitting in a room yelling at each other for six months, we didn't know, 'What are we trying to accomplish here?"

Clark is particularly critical of Maine Department of Education Commissioner Susan Gendron for trying to implement a complex statewide reorganization plan with insufficient staff. Clark says the state should have simply told the districts what they wanted to achieve in savings and let the superintendents solve the problem.

"Get the DOE out of it," he said. "If the consolidation in Franklin County had been left to Quenten Clark and Michael Cormier, it would have worked. The utter dismissal and disrespect for local leadership has opened wounds that won't soon heal. A very large majority of superintendents and board members would sacrifice their own interests if it was right for their districts. In north Franklin County, I'm trusted, I'm trusted in those communities. Sue Gendron and her minions are not."

But not all superintendents attending the meeting agree with Clark. "We discovered one district had 52 telephone lines -- in the whole RSU we have 20, so we are discovering things people didn't know that were problems, and things are being corrected. Why? Because somebody is in charge," said Don Siviskey, a superintendent from the Hallowell area, who says consolidation provided an opportunity for savings, and for better organization.

"We now have a building and grounds director who's in charge of all the buildings and grounds codes and compliances," Siviskey says. "We have a food and nutrition director who's serving nutritious foods -- whole wheats, milk and so forth and so on. We actually cook food instead of warming it."

But state Sen. Carol Weston, a Montville Republican on the Education Committee, says not all districts had the same experience as those in the Hallowell area. Weston says the law should be revisited during the next session. "This law could and should have some tweaking, and we can then bring about that decrease in taxes and efficiency in our school districts."

Skip Greenlaw, Chairman of the Maine Coalition to Save Our Schools that launched the failed repeal initiative, says he is optimistic that the legislative panel will make some needed changes to the law. "Well, I've very optimistic. The day after the election I talked with one of the members of the Education Committee and he led me to believe that the committee is very sympathetic to the issues we talked about. Something has to happen, or the state is going to be torn apart."

Greenlaw and some superintendents would like the Legislature to hold a public hearing on a bill and correct flaws in the consolidation law by the end of January.